The death of Progressive Unionist leader David Ervine was announced yesterday by his family following his sudden illness at the weekend.
The 53-year-old East Belfast Assembly member had been transferred from the Ulster Hospital, Dondonald, to the Royal Victoria in Belfast after he suffered a heart attack and stroke.
The family statement said he had "passed away quietly with peace and dignity". They thanked medical staff at the hospitals and appealed for privacy.
Mr Ervine took seriously ill at the weekend just hours after he had written the draft of an opinion article intended for publication by the Belfast Telegraph.
It is understood the piece, on the current difficulties in the peace process, will appear in today's editions with the consent of his family.
Mr Ervine represented solidly unionist East Belfast at Stormont following election to the Assembly in the wake of the Belfast Agreement which he was instrumental in bringing about.
He also held a seat on Belfast City Council since 1997, having failed to secure election some years earlier. He succeeded Cllr Hugh Smith as leader of the UVF-aligned party in 2002 and was returned to Stormont in 2003 in an election which saw Sinn Féin and the DUP establish leading positions at the expense of smaller parties and the Ulster Unionists and SDLP.
The same election saw the defeat in North Belfast of close party colleague Billy Hutchinson.
Mr Ervine joined the UVF in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Friday in 1972 when the IRA exploded 21 bombs across Belfast, killing nine people.
Although open about his paramilitary past, he was always reserved about the circumstances of his arrest for transporting a bomb in east Belfast. He was sentenced to 11 years at the Maze prison in 1974 and it was there he came under the influence of loyalist leader Gusty Spence.
He was released in 1980 and worked, at various turns, as a milkman and a newsagent before turning to politics.
Mr Ervine was a significant player in the combined loyalist ceasefire announcement, read out by Spence in October 1994, just six weeks after the first IRA cessation.
He played a key part in the talks which led to conclusion of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, a role for which talks chairman Senator George Mitchell said of him: "There is not a more impressive politician in Northern Ireland than David Ervine."
Mr Ervine is survived by his wife and two sons.
In a statement issued last night the Progressive Unionist Party said that politics had lost a most influential spokesman.
"He turned no one away and worked tirelessly to achieve his best. Loyalism has lost its most articulate spokesperson. Unionism has lost the most progressive voice of this generation."